In this month's issue

Taste.com.au - April 2013
Eat in, eat out, eat well. Look for the taste liftout on Tuesdays in the Herald Sun, Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph, on Wednesdays in the Adelaide Advertiser, and in Perth’s Sunday Times.

It's easy to get the most from the world's favourite meat, writes Simon Wilkinson.

Homer Simpson isn't the only one who thinks the pig is a "wonderful, magical animal".

Quiz most chefs on their all-time favourite ingredients and some form of pork will most likely be in the top five. They love the versatility of meat that keeps on giving, whether it's a juicy belly roast with wicked crunchy crackling, fingerlicking ribs, bacon sizzling in the pan, or even a smoked hock bubbling away to make a warming pea and ham soup.

The home cook will have their own priorities, with ease and economics near the top of that list. Once again, pork comes up trumps with a cut that is cheap and versatile.

Pork scotch is the great allrounder. Want a steak for dinner tonight? A slice of pork scotch will give you a tender piece of meat for a lot less cost than its beef equivalent.

How about a roast? A piece of pork scotch, often sold rolled and oven ready, has that covered. Roast it low and slow enough and you've got the pulled pork that's all the rage in trendy tacos and sliders. Stew? You won't believe how luscious cubes of meat will be.

With this month being the Australian Festival of Pork, a celebration of the season when pork is at its most abundant, there's no better time to try it.

Buyer's guide

Pork scotch is also known, more anatomically, as pork neck, and is the large fillet that runs down either side of the pig from head to shoulder. You will find it sold as ready-sliced steaks, wrapped in netting for a pork roast or, at butchers, as a large fillet that can often be trimmed to the size you want.

Look for meat that is a shiny pale to rosy pink.

A porcine passport

Pork is one of the world's most widely eaten meats, so whichever way you head around the globe, there is plenty of inspiration.

And the scotch cut is your ticket to ride.

"You can cook it in so many different ways," says Lauren Murdoch, chef at the 3 Weeds Hotel in Sydney.

"It can be adapted to lots of different recipes. Sear it quickly or slow roast it for an hour and a half and it's still amazingly tender."

The secret is that pork scotch has a small amount of well distributed fat, meaning it falls between the lean meat of fillet or loin, and richer, fattier cuts such as the belly.

Italian

Roasting porchetta, the meat rolled with garlic, fennel seed and other aromatics, is part of most Italian celebrations and market days.

Lauren brings some of those flavours to her pork scotch steak, which is brushed with oil and seasoned with salt, pepper and crushed fennel. She uses a 2cm thick steak, sears it on a hot grill, and then finishes it in the oven. Alternatively, she says, it could be cooked on the barbecue, starting with a hotter part of the grill, then moving to a cooler spot to finish.

Her salad, with the clean flavours of shaved pear and bitter edge of radicchio, is the perfect foil. It would also work with a plump, Italian-style pork sausage, the mince coarsely ground and spiked with garlic, fennel and dried chilli.

South-East Asia

Thread cubes of pork on to little bamboo skewers and you're travelling first-class to South-East Asia.

Marinate with coconut milk, fish sauce and lemongrass, then dip in a lime/chilli sauce, and you're venturing into Vietnam; blend a rich peanut sauce and you've moved on to Malaysia. Or try a Japanese-style yakitori barbecue, where pork skewers are brushed with soy and mirin.

Indian

While pork isn't eaten in all parts of India, it is best-known in a vindaloo-style curry, in which the richness is cut through by a requisite splosh of vinegar.